


Lost in Translation

by Lasertits



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Gen, Grandpa yondu, I can see headcanon for miles up here, Language & Identity, PTSD, Ravager Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 07:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11308443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasertits/pseuds/Lasertits
Summary: To Peter, the whole Galaxy speaks English.To Yondu, it speaks Kree.Or, Yondu and his four languages.





	Lost in Translation

**Author's Note:**

> In which the Author does scattered research (oh man, talk Khoisan to me), is confused by the Marvel Wiki, but mostly just pulls everything out of his...eh, invents everything. 
> 
> Don't remember where I got Galactic Pidgin from, but it's genius. If it was you, let me know and I credit. Other fanon probably stolen from Write_like_an_American, Sholio and the like.

A translator implant uses the language you've grown up with, that's wired into your cortex (or cortexes, if you have multiple brains). If you're bilingual from the start, it makes everyone speak a mixture of the two languages.

If you're adopted as a baby, you hear the language of your adoptive parents.

If you're taken by the Kree, well.

 

Zatoan is soft, musical, more lilting than the languages of the neighbouring tribes. The clicks are mostly against the roof of the mouth rather than in the throat. Or so he's heard, because he hasn't actually met anyone from his birth tribe, and he's not sure he'd want to.

Yondu Udonta doesn't speak a word of it, but he remembers the sweetly rising and falling cadence, like how the carrion birds sang on Hala, by the slave pens, all through summer. His father, whoever he was, must have talked to him when he was in the pouch. Maybe his mother too, when she came home from hunting.

Which indicates they once cared, maybe even that they planned to keep him first. Because there's no real point talking to a pouchling that just lies there with a teat in its mouth and doesn't understand shit, not if you're going to sell it as soon as it's out.

 

First actual words he remembers are in Kree. That language is harsh, flat, staccato. Every sentence sounds like it has an exclamation mark at the end. If Zatoan is suited for lullabies, Kree is suited for violence. Kree sounds like mag collars, like fear turned apathy, like losing yourself.

 

Standard Xandarian is bland, utilitarian, fitter for business than poetry. He's fluent in it, which is useful because his new and otherwise brilliant First Mate, is as bad at learning Ravager Pidgin as he is at reading. Kraglin Obfonteri speaks only Low Xandarian so far, which is few consonants and much swearing.

 

Yondu's Centaurian is actually his fourth language. He's cobbled it together from offworld Centaurians of various tribes, from highbrow meta-books on "primitive cultures", and he's made the Ravaging-adjacent parts of it up, because there's nobody else here who speaks it and can call him out on it.

He'd probably end up dead if he tried it anywhere on Centauri-IV, and the offworlders all live planetside in closely knit communities, where a mutilated, Kree-raised criminal would not be welcome. Oh, they'll be polite if he's doing business with them, but it's clear they don't see him as proper kin. There'll be no retiring one day to live with his people.

Well, fuck them, putting their noses in the air at him, when he's the most famous and successful of the lot.

If he speaks only Xandarian and Pidgin to the offworlders, never his halting Centaurian, it's not because he fears rejection.

 

Ravager Galactic Pidgin, his third, is a mess. It's cadence is all over the place, ever-shifting depending on which and how many languages you put in your personal gumbo.

Yeah, they all have implants, but Ravager Pidgin is easier on your energy levels as the implant is part bio, connected to your bloodstream, and runs on sugars same as your brain. If you don't need it, it goes into sleep mode and quits burning calories. Having a sort of common language means less infighting due to miscommunication, and breeds a sense of community with your clan. Ravager speech is also tailor made for their lifestyle. There's more useful words for the finer points of thieving, murdering and smuggling than Terra Inuits supposedly have for snow.

So Yondu gets himself a bootleg signal jammer implant, sits on the edge of his nest and reads the warning label on the box. Must be inserted by a medical professional in a sterile environment. Overuse of the jammer risks messing with your neural pathways. Biocompatability test before insertion recommended. Other warnings, see fold out booklet. Yada yada, he's a fucking Ravager Captain.

He dabs himself behind the ear with a disinfectant wipe, raises the injection gun and shoots himself in the head.

Now he can switch the translator off between jobs. Sure, it means he misses a word here and there, when someone on his crew gets creative. But it's worth it if he doesn't have to listen to any accidental Kree om his own ship, whenever the damn thing kicks to life.

Jobs are ok, contacts are ok, he can prepare himself for them. New recruits, well he lets someone else handle them until they've learnt to speak like proper civilized folks.

 

Then there's the kid.

 

Who's small and skinny and not threatening in the least. Who screams at them in perfect Eastern Hala Kree, because the Universe wants to fuck with Yondu. Well right back at it.

"Ixxa EK-ke!", the little shit screeches, trapped between two of them but still kicking and clawing. "KATTE'te Rrrhukkae!"

Not that Yondu flinches. Of course not. He understands what it means; "Let **go** of me! Take me **back**!" Nothing worse than that, just a puny Terran. They ain't coming for him. And wh..if they do, they sure ain't ever getting him back alive, even if he has to bite open his own arteries to do it, or swallow his ton...

He get's his breathing under control, forces his shoulders back. "Let's git to Medbay", he says to his men. "Bring the Cargo".

When they finally manage to give the terror an implant, there's a lot of eyebrow-raising and frowning as soon as he understands them. So stars know how Ravager Pidgin sounds in Terran.

 

He can't just hide him away like the others, until they're delivered and Yondu can switch off his translator.

Can't let him run loose either. He'll push a shiny button and accidentally space himself, or play with a fallen power cable, or piss someone off so much they forget their Captain's orders and actually eat him.

Ends up being Yondu who has to deal with it. And maybe he smacks the kid around a bit much. Maybe there's more death threats, ear pinches and yelling than neccessary. Maybe he sees the way the kid's trying to latch onto him, and feels bad for pushing him away. But you can't spoil children. You have to toughen them up, because the world eats soft, trusting things alive, and he doesn't want to help it do that any more.

The kid sleeps in his quarters, under strict orders to shut his gob or else. Yondu snarls and shows his arrow if he so much as hears a guttural peep.

He teaches him Ravager Pidgin himself. Thank the stars the kid's quicker om the uptake than Obfonteri.

 

 

Stakar himself comes like a grizzled angel from heaven, carries him away from all the hand-wringing and crying, to some white place where medbots glide through the corridors. He's checked out for most of it, floating just under the surface. It's all there; the pain, the surgeries, the drainage tubes and the skin grafts, but it's mostly happening to some other poor bastard, and he may pity them a bit but it's not really his problem.

Someone sits beside him for the worst things, cups his face in one wrinkled but still strong hand.

 

 

" _I must get a new tribe_ ..eh, _crew_ ," he says to the plant. It's just them and the stars, his boy and the rest of them are sleeping.

_"I am not ready to return to Stakar, not also ready to retire."_

The little thing looks up at him with its big, dark eyes. Aw, he's cute. Could just stick him on his dashboard. He scratches him on the head.

"I am Groot?"

" _May be I go travel first, visit contacts. No. Friends. Pick up things I have stash there. I bring Kraglin along, we take .."_

Damnit, Centaurian has no word for "vacation". " _We rest."_

"I am Groot!", the little bugger squeaks, approving. He curls up in Yondu's arms, and they watch the starscape together.

Yondu rocks him gently, like he did to Peter once or twice when he was small and they weren't fighting. It's nice. Peaceful. The Tyek Nebula is off to the right, hanging like a pretty bauble in the sky, just waiting for him. He and Kraglin will start there.

"Hey there, old man", Peter says, standing in the doorway and yawning behind his hand. "Oh. Hi, Groot".

He plonks himself into the co-pilot chair, and promply slides half off it in a teenage-style slouch.

"Man, that's cool, that thing you were speaking. Never heard you do it proper before."

He scratches his belly, yawns again.

"Can't go back to sleep yet. You guys want company? You could teach me some of that if you want. Could be fun."

 

Seems Peter is a natural, even if there are a couple of consonants that his anatomy just isn't made for.

And sure, it's still under construction, their language. Ravager Centaurian. Decent vocabulary, wonky grammar, number of current speakers 2,2, because Kraglin only knows a few bedroom commands. But it's nothing can't be fixed.

They're trading insults all over the ship, competing about who can make the most creative ones, and he's. He's actually happy.

 

" _Are. You. Aware_ ", Gamora says cooly, in 100% perfect pronounciation, right off the bat, what the hell?  
" _..that it is four and three-ten in the morning, that you have been making foul jokes for two days full, that you are making much noise, and that some of us would enjoy to go the fuck to sleep?_ "

 


End file.
